Kurt Elling Closes the Season!

Kutztown University will partner with Boscov’s Berks Jazz Fest to present “Kurt Elling Celebrates Weather Report,” featuring special guest drummer Peter Erskine, on Wednesday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Auditorium.

Elling, known for his smooth vocals and his forays into “vocalese,” will bring back the incomparable music created by the late saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Joe Zawinul and many others in the jazz fusion super-band Weather Report. Erskine performed with the group for four years (1978 to 1982) as part of the rhythm section, working with the the legendary bassist, Jaco Pastorius.

For the uninitiated, vocalese is an art form in which a jazz singer creates lyrics to be sung to the melody of an instrumental solo. This art was pioneered and developed by vocalist Jon Hendricks during the 1950s, along with Annie Ross and Dave Lambert in the legendary vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

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